The east from different sides

I am just really happy to be able to travel around the whole of my country. Photo by Indi Samarajiva

Report from the east By Indi Samarajiva

I’m writing this from Polonnaruwa, heading back from the east. We traveled from Yala East to Pasikudah, by bus, trishaw and bicycle. If you look at a map of Sri Lanka you can see where the money flows, the thickly veined networks of the west. The east is only now coming online. It’s not the easiest place to travel around, but it is amazing. This is what I saw over a few days on the coast.

South East

The eastern coast begins where Yala ends. During the war this stretch was quite dangerous, but now it seems completely secured. We took some bicycles from Arugam Bay and pedaled down towards Panama. The scenery is still populated with water buffaloes, peacocks and even wild elephants. Now construction machines also roam the earth.
Past Panama you can turn towards Okanda and continue on a dirt path to the Kudumbigala Monastery. This is a beautiful and calm series of huge boulders and caves at the mouth of the jungle. After the dry heat of the eastern coast, it’s a veritable oasis.
I briefly meditated, and the monk was quite happy to let my Muslim friend and I pray. There were STF guys stationed below and they kindly shared their water with us and let us douse ourselves from the well. These are small moments, but they still give me hope that we can all live together.

Roads

On the way back some of the road workers flagged us over for a cup of tea. We were quite thirsty and we stopped. Many of the road workers I’ve been seeing lately are women. There are often six women working and one man standing around. This group was no different. They said they were farmers, but they were working for about 450 rupees a day until the season changed. It hasn’t rained for a long time and the fields are parched.
The Panama road doesn’t seem like a repair or expansion job, it looks like there was no road there before. They’re paving over dirt and the elephants haven’t got the memo. One got mad and charged when we tried to cross what was recently his territory. But it’s ours now, for better or worse. We crossed with cover from the many armed men walking around.

Heading North

As you leave the international oasis of Arugam Bay, you encounter about five checkpoints getting into Batticaloa. You also pass dry parched fields and quite a few universities and educational institutes. The issue is not so much this transport, or the transport onwards to the beautiful beaches of Kalkudah and Pasikudah. The issue is after that.
For all the roads being built, you still can’t go directly from Batticaloa to Trincomalee. You have to go through Habarana, which is a significant and annoying detour. The capital of the Eastern Province is Trinco and Batti is one of its biggest cities. Yet you have to cross into another province to connect. Much more than the Panama road, this is the lifeline of the east. I hope it reopens soon.

Development

Regardless, the locals in Kalkudah say that the Rajapaksa family and friends have already started claiming lands there. They themselves run humble (and delicious) kottu stands and hope for tourists to return. They say much of the stunning coast has been given out to hotel developers. This is OK by me, I just hope the locals get jobs and backpackers still have cheap places to stay.

Observations

More generally, it seems that while the east is Tamil speaking, it is not ‘Tamil’. There seem to be as many Muslims and Tamils and quite a few Sinhalese.
Tamil is the language but not necessarily the race of the land. Cities, of course, tend to be where minorities congregate, but that’s the general impression. Muslims have a big stake in the east.
It is also striking just how much less the east is developed than the west. Instead of businesses you see USAID and development agency boards (never a good sign). The roads are under-construction and still disconnected from each other and the rest of the country. Much of this was because the LTTE thrived on destruction and disconnection, but it’s now Sri Lanka’s obligation to improve things.

And things are improving. A local bus driver seemed happy about the roads, though he said they hadn’t necessarily created jobs. The people in Arugam Bay thought tourists would come back and wanted to invest. Me, personally, I am just really happy to be able to travel around the whole of my country. I’d like to be able to get to Trinco, Mullaitivu and then Jaffna in a continuous trip, but this is a start. I hope that traversing their entire coastline will be something my children take for granted. Leaving space, of course, for the elephants.